Why Did Journalists Like Me Take Ryan Routh Seriously?

In March 2023 I interviewed a strange man named Ryan Routh. We had been introduced by a source inside Ukraine’s foreign legion, a military unit composed of foreign volunteers from more than fifty countries all over the world.

Routh, a 58-year-old former roofing contractor from Greensboro, NC, who had no military experience, had set up a private organization in Kiev that helped connect international fighters with Ukraine’s military units and aid groups. And he made his way into my story about U.S.-trained Afghan commandos eager to join Ukraine’s war effort. 

He seemed genuinely passionate, if perhaps a little too eager to aid a foreign war halfway around the world. After my story published, I never thought about him again.

Until yesterday, that is, when the name Ryan Routh exploded across my phone—and yours. 

Routh traveled to Donald Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach on Sunday, hid in the bushes with an “AK-style” rifle for 12 hours, and then tried to assassinate the former president. It was the second such attempt in as many months. 

In the day since his arrest, much has come out about Ryan Routh. He had a long criminal record, for starters. “Records show Routh’s issues with the law go back to the 1990s and include lesser charges of writing bad checks. But in 2002 he was charged with possession of a weapon of mass destruction, a felony, according to North Carolina Department of Corrections records,” according to CBS reporting. “In another incident, he was charged with misdemeanors, including a hit-and-run offense, resisting arrest, and a concealed weapons violation.” I am sure in the coming days we’ll learn even more. 

But I didn’t know any of this last year when I sat down to interview Routh for Semafor, where I worked at the time. Nor, apparently, did any of the other outlets who took Ryan Routh seriously.

Right around the time my story ran, The New York Times interviewed Routh for an article about American volunteers on the Ukrainian frontlines. Newsweek spoke to him, too. He reportedly met with elected officials on Capitol Hill, and had contacts inside Ukraine’s Defense Ministry. Journalists, activists, and policymakers saw him as a credible figure.

And that’s despite the fact that his criminal record was there for everyone to see. Journalists could have found it if they had thought to question his motives, or even his sanity. The guy moves to the capital of a nation at war, despite having no personal connection to it. He doesn’t speak Russian or Ukrainian. In retrospect, shouldn’t it have struck the reporters, including myself, as a little bit. . . odd?

The question is: Why didn’t it?

Well, for one, I thought he was doing good work: It was clear he cared deeply about Ukraine’s struggle. I am Russian—born and raised in Moscow—but I consider the Russian war against Ukraine an unjustified act of aggression. So did Ryan Routh. He also came recommended as one of the more capable foreign volunteers in the Ukraine effort—someone who got things done. He’d built relationships with frontline military unit commanders and served as a de facto liaison between foreign fighters and Ukrainian forces. Hundreds of Afghans alone volunteered to fight directly through his website. He arranged visas and helped with other logistics of entering the country. He even traveled to Washington, D.C., to push lawmakers for more support for Kiev. Routh wasn’t just fighting for Ukraine—he was part of a larger narrative of good versus evil. 

Perhaps that’s why I and so many others overlooked everything that was so obviously off about him: his unhinged rants—see here and here—his eccentric looks, and his impatience with anyone who got in his way. When The New York Times interviewed Routh in 2023, he apparently shared a message with the reporter: “he needs to be shot,” Routh said of an American foreign fighter who appeared to talk down to him in a Facebook exchange.

Over the past day I’ve been thinking a lot about what else—who else—gets the same kind of pass. These days, the right kind of crazy is there every time you turn on the TV, or scroll through your social media. “No ears were harmed. Carry on with your Sunday afternoon,” Rachel Vindman tweeted casually, referring to Trump’s previous assassination attempt a mere two months earlier. (She later deleted it.) 

Last week, MSNBC watchers could tune into Elie Mystal declaring: “Trump supporters are just as despicable as he is,” with the show’s host Joy Reid nodding in agreement. Trump supporters, Mystal said, are “just as ungenerous and have just as little compassion and empathy for others.” It was just another night on cable news. The fact that statements like these generate so little outrage is a clear sign of how degraded our public discourse has become.

Trump’s other would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, was shot on sight. But Ryan Routh is very much alive, and he’s the kind of person who doesn’t hesitate to share his views. In the coming weeks, journalists should ask him about his motives, his rationale, his plunge from advocacy into violence, and his broader descent into extremism.

The story of Ryan Routh is a cautionary tale. Our increasing willingness to tolerate madness in the service of the causes with which we might agree risks obscuring the simple fact that the “right” kind of crazy is still exactly that: crazy. 

Tanya Lukyanova is a video journalist at The Free Press.

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